Participatory design and “democratizing innovation” (original) (raw)

Agonistic participatory design: working with marginalised social movements

CoDesign, 2012

Participatory design (PD) has become increasingly engaged in public spheres and everyday life and is no longer solely concerned with the workplace. This is not only a shift from work-oriented productive activities to leisure and pleasurable engagements, but also a new milieu for production and 'innovation'. What 'democratic innovation' entails is often currently defined by management and innovation research, which claims that innovation has been democratised through easy access to production tools and lead-users as the new experts driving innovation. We sketch an alternative 'innovation' practice more in line with the original visions of PD based on our experience of running Malmo¨Living Labsan open innovation milieu where new constellations, issues and ideas evolve from bottom-up long-term collaborations among diverse stakeholders. Three cases and controversial matters of concern are discussed. The fruitfulness of the concepts 'agonistic public spaces' (as opposed to consensual decision-making), 'thinging' and 'infrastructuring' (as opposed to projects) are explored in relation to democracy, innovation and other future-making practices.

From Empowerment to Enablement. An evolution of new dimensions in participatory design

Logistik und Arbeit, 1996

Since the seventies there has been a legislation in Sweden on user participation in design of work-places. This paper will discuss how participatory design has developed during this two decades in Sweden. We argue that in the beginning participation was mostly a matter of distribution of power between the employer and the unions. This developed into a tool to collect knowledge to improve the quality of the design. In the eighties we see a new dimension of participatory design, that of organisational learning and development through collective design. The paper discusses this evolution of participatory design in terms of some relevant factors; the actors, the mode of communication, focus of the design process, the goals, the roles of the actors, the context and finally the tools used and developed.

Partitioning Vulnerabilities: On the Paradoxes of Participatory Design in the City of Malmö

Vulnerability in Scandinavian Art and Culture , 2020

In this chapter, Björgvinsson and Keshavarz challenge the claims of Scandinavian participatory design in initiating bottom-up change, democratic engagement and overcoming the vulnerabilities of marginal groups. By following its trajectory from its engagement with trade unions in the 1970s to local communities in the 2000s and beyond, the chapter problematizes participatory design’s presuppositions in relation to vulnerabilities associated with different groups. Through analysing a participatory design project where Björgvinsson was involved, the authors show how the call to and the process of participation always happen in an already partitioned world. As such, they argue participation does not necessarily give equal voices to participating parts, as frequently claimed but, rather, produce new parts, ignore certain other parts and lift up particular parts depending on the power relations involved. The chapter concludes that participatory methods not only generate less recognized vulnerabilities, but also ignore the resistance made by vulnerable groups against uneven participation.

Visions that change. Articulating the politics of participatory design

CoDesign, 2020

In this paper we draw upon the articles included in this special issue to question how to re-politicise co-design and participatory design (PD). Many authors in these fields have recently made a plea to reengage with 'big issues' as a way to address this concern. At the same time, there is an increased attention into the micro-politics of the relations that are built-in co-design and PD. These two approaches are sometimes presented as working against each other with a depoliticising dynamic as a result. The editorial hypothesis of this issue is that designing visions can turn the tension between addressing the big issues and close attention to the particularity of relations into a motor for re-politicising design. Through engaging with literature, the articles presented in this issue, and two fieldwork cases that explore this dynamic, we discovered that paying careful attention to the activity of designing visions can support re-politicisation. While visions enable us to develop relations with close attention to their politics, building relations supports a more political approach to designing visions on issues. We argue that vision-making can particularly support re-politicisation when it enables the articulation of the political by relating its situated reality to how it unfolds in space and time.

DESIGN AS DEMOCRACY: THE DEMOCRATIC POTENTIAL OF DESIGN

DESIGNING SUSTAINABILITY FOR ALL, 2019

The present article proposes to investigate possible futures for the design through a proximal and dialogical ap- proach between design and democracy. In this way, we begin with the letter “Stand Up for Democracy”, written by Manzini and Margolin. Thus we seek to understand the foundations of the concept of Design as Democracy, pro- posed by the mentioned authors. We seek a relationship between the structures of democratic models and design practices. For these reasons, we have opened up a dialogue on codesign as a possible methodological alternative for a democratic design, more comprehensive, horizontal and open for all. Providing a fertile ground where collective creativity can be used as a form of collaboration and solving common problems is mirrored in design as democracy. For this resonates with the creation of a more inclusive and sustainable world for the future generation.

Bridging the Gap Between Politics and Techniques: On the next practices of participatory design

This paper discusses how we in the participatory design (PD) research community may contribute to the evolution of ICT design 1 practices into something that is much more attuned to people using ICT and to their interests. The main idea is that to do so we need to focus more on issues in the gap between politics and techniques, e.g., project funding, types of users and of use settings, the role of companies and of Intellectual Property Rights and the types of projects we work on. The paper presents material illustrating that important changes are going on in the dimensions outlined by these issues and argues that these changes create important, new opportunities for PD to contribute to the 'next practices' of ICT design-as well as serious problems. Thus to exploit these new opportunities we need to improve our understanding of the issues involved and to develop new ways of taking them into account when we design and do research projects.

Participatory Design: A Historical Perspective

2021

Participatory design is an attitude about a force for change in the creation and management of environments for people. Its strength lies in being a movement that cuts across traditional professional boundaries and cultures. Its roots lie in the ideals of a participatory democracy where collective decision-making is highly decentralized throughout all sectors of society, so that all individuals learn participatory skills and can effectively participate in various ways in the making of all decisions that affect them. Increasingly complex decision-making processes require a more informed citizenry that has considered the evidence on the issue, discussed potential decision options and arrived at a mutually agreed upon decision (Abelson et al, 2003).Today participatory design processes are being applied to urban design, planning, and geography as well as to the fields of industrial and information technology. Research findings suggest that positive outcomes are associated with solutions...

Participatory Design as an Approach to Social Innovation

Design Philosophy Papers, 2011

is the Head of Undergraduate Courses at University of the Sinos Valley (Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos) and design professor at Unisinos Design School. His research is focused on innovation, social innovation and learning organization, in which he is also consultant for companies.

The Ability to Make a Difference in Participatory Design Projects

Nordes 2017: Design and Power, 2017

The case study presented here is an intensive nineday community participation project in a Swiss town, aimed at fostering community food production. The approach to participatory design presented here seeks to emphasize the in-situ improvisatory 'doing' of collaborative activities. Using notions such as diffusing, reifying and catalyzing the study describes the iterative movement of the project that is bound up in material arrangements and social relations. Through a reflection in action approach, the author unpacks how the designer's agency is understood through social interactions and acts of summarizing, materialization and translation. The paper concludes by discussing power and agency, both as an outcome and central to the design process. This reflective exploration through the lens of agency seeks to encourage the reflexivity of designers in collaborative practice.